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Teachers refusing to collect milk money, labour board told

Not in school snack programs any more in most of cottage country, where teachers are refusing to collect milk money as part of their protest against Bill 115.

The cancellation of all but six school milk programs in the Trillium Lakelands District School Board is just one of the lost services that has prompted it and the Upper Canada District School Board to seek a cease-and-desist order against the teachers’ extracurricular boycott from the Ontario Labour Relations Board.

The two boards claim the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO) is telling its members not to do anything except teach the required 300 minutes a day which, by disrupting the “normal activities” of schools, constitutes an illegal strike.

“The loss of milk programs is one of the reasons we’re here today. Because teachers have been told not to collect milk money, we’ve gone from having milk programs in 27 elementary schools to just six schools,” said Trillium Lakelands Chair Karen Round.

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Under the Education Act, illegal strike activity is anything that limits “the normal activities of a board . . . or the operation of a school” and includes any collective action to withdraw services.

The boards hope Labour Relations Board Chair Bernard Fishbein will agree that telling teachers to withdraw those services limits the normal activities of a board.

However, much of the two days of hearing so far have been taken up by the teachers’ union arguing its contracts are invalid now that Bill 115 has been repealed.

Fishbein said Monday he was not ready yet to rule on that point, but in the meantime has turned his focus to the question of whether union memos against extracurriculars constitute counselling teachers to conduct illegal strike activity.

While the case pits two small rural school boards against the largest teachers’ union in the country, many are watching for a ruling that could influence the future of extracurricular life at Ontario’s public English-language schools.

ETFO president Sam Hammond may meet later this week with incoming premier Kathleen Wynne to see if there is a political solution to the extracurricular impasse, something the union considers so important its lawyers had asked for the case to be adjourned until after the meeting. Fishbein rejected an adjournment.

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